Camouflage (25 page)

The changeling gave itself, as Sharon, glowing job references from two dead professors and Coleridge, who of course was off diving but could be reached at [email protected].

-41-

Apia, Samoa, 16 July 2021

"She wasn't human," Jack Halliburton said. "No human could have an arm blown off and then outdo a Hollywood stuntman in falling, running, swimming. What was she?"

Jack and Jan had Russell alone in Jack's suite at Aggie Grey's. "You loved her?" Jan said.

"This is so confusing," Russell said.

"You had sex with her," Jack said.

"Jesus, Jack." Russell winced and turned away.

"No, listen. You've had sex with other women; lots of them."

Russell looked toward Jan for support and got a blank stare. "I wouldn't say 'lots.'"

"So was there anything about her anatomy that seemed strange? Anything about her psychology?"

"I did love her," he said to Jan. "I fell for her like dropping off a cliff."

"But
think!"
Jack persisted. "Anything that wasn't human?"

"She was a hell of a lot more human than
you,
Jack. She was funny and sweet and interested in everything."

"That's scary," Jan said.

"I know it is." Russell sank back into the big soft easy chair. "More scary to me than anybody."

Jack levered himself up off the couch and stalked across the room to a table with three crystal liquor decanters. He poured himself a splash of whisky and dropped an ice cube into it. "Do you think she could have been some kind of construct, sent to spy on us?"

"Yeah, sure," Russell said. "A robot. That accounts for the metallic sound when you rapped your knuckles on her."

"I mean biological."

"Of course. You think anybody in the world is capable of 'constructing' a superhuman?"

"She came from somewhere." The phone rang and Jack snatched it up. He listened for about a minute, giving monosyllabic responses, and then said, "I don't know what to say. We'll get back to you. Thanks." He set the phone softly back on the cradle.

"Who was that?" Jan said.

He twirled the ice around in his glass. "Woman named Peterson, Doctor Peterson. Forensic pathologist. Local." He shook his head. "They sent a flesh sample from the arm over to Pago Pago for analysis, DNA identification."

"They identified her?"

"It's not a 'her.'" He took a small sip. "It's not even human—not even animal. It doesn't have DNA."

"Holy Christ," Russell said.

Jack sat down. "Russ ... you were fucking an alien from another planet. That's probably illegal in Samoa."

-42-

Honolulu, Hawaii, 18 July 2021

The changeling had winced when it saw the headline space alien discovered in Samoa. It bought a paper and learned that it had murdered a "high-level American intelligence operative" by "injecting a mysterious substance."

An editorial urged tolerance rather than fear. The alien would come forward if it knew it would not be harmed. The American government could be reasonable.

That was tempting. The electric chair would be a stimulating experience.

The story explained that scientists knew it was an alien because a tissue sample had no DNA. Was there any way to fake that?

The changeling had several degrees in biology, but didn't know much about its own. It didn't know what mechanisms were involved in changing from one creature—one
thing
—to another. It was as natural as breathing or photosynthesis were to organisms on Earth, and no more amenable to auto-analysis: if you were the only creature around that breathed, you could hardly dissect yourself and learn about lungs.

Of course the changeling
could
dissect itself, and did on a regular basis, but that didn't teach it anything on the molecular level. Besides, the only science it knew was human science, and whatever it did when it changed into a shark or a roll of linoleum wasn't covered by Organic Chemistry 101.

It did absorb DNA when it ate, naturally, and human DNA sometimes when it had sex with a male human. But whatever passed for metabolism in its body didn't retain the stuff. It could absorb a school of albacore tuna and somehow change their substance into a Volkswagen.

Poseidon was probably going to be on the lookout for their alien returning, and would test job applicants for the presence of human DNA. What procedure could Sharon Valida expect?

A little research showed it that DNA testing for purposes of identification was usually done with buccal swabs, just wiping a few cells off the inside of the cheek, noninvasive and less personal than a blood or sperm sample. All it had to do was contrive to have a mouthful of human flesh before it sat down to apply for work.

Biting somebody, alive or dead, on the way to an interview didn't seem practical. You could buy live portable DNA in the form of blood or sperm, but both posed practical problems, when it came to opening one's mouth for the doctor or police officer.

Pure DNA was sold for research purposes, but only in microscopic quantities, hardly a mouthful. Besides, they might even decide to
be
invasive—want a job? We'll have to take a little blood.

If it were only Russell involved, the changeling would just come out and tell him. Show up one night as Rae to get his attention, and explain. But there were all those tiresome people with guns—and Jack was ultimately in charge, not Russell. Jack felt dangerous, almost feral in his greedy intensity, and he could infer the changeling's abilities from what had happened at Aggie Grey's. There probably wouldn't be a window facing the sea if Jack had anything to do with the conditions of their meeting.

On the other hand, the changeling knew enough about the Poseidon labs to know they couldn't test for DNA in-house. The samples would go to Pago Pago, or even back here to Honolulu. That would buy some time, and also might afford an opportunity for substitution.

Perhaps the smartest thing would be to wait, to go join the circus again for a couple of decades; let things cool down. Jack and Russell would die, and new people would be in charge of the artifact.

But there were factors arguing against that, not the least of which being its feelings for Russ; it wanted him, above all others, to know what was really going on. Also, in twenty years—or five, or one—it was likely that the artifact would wind up in a vault in Washington, or Langley, impossible to approach.

There was something deeper, too, that the changeling couldn't quite put a name to. Something in that pattern of ones and zeros was coming together—not logic, not numbers, but some sort of message.

Jan and Russ and the rest of Poseidon were analyzing the digits by looking for an analogue to the Drake message. But maybe the message was not for them. Maybe it was not for any human.

-43-

Apia, Samoa, 20 July 2021

They decided to set a trap for the alien.

"Rae wanted to get to the artifact, but was playing it cool. She asked me about getting around the security protocols so she could actually be in the same room with it; touch it." Russell was doodling while he talked, drawing precise geometrical figures. He and Jack and Jan were outside Jack's suite at Aggie Grey's, talking quietly on the balcony. Jack had belatedly realized the spooks could have had his room bugged. It was less likely with the wrought-iron patio furniture, exposed to the elements.

"You told her you could arrange it?" Jan said.

"Put her off. I said security'd probably be relaxed soon, if the artifact stayed calm."

"Leading her on," Jack said.

"Maybe so. But I had no reason to think it was anything other than normal curiosity. Who wouldn't want to go take a look at the thing?"

"Especially someone who'd come all this way to take a low-paying job, out of curiosity about it," Jan said. "We tested her enthusiasm, remember, by having her pay her own way out for the interview."

"Which we can do again, for the trap," Jack said. "But maybe we should be more subtle."

Russell nodded. "Whatever Rae is, she knows human nature well. She's either going to be very careful or direct. She might just phone us and set up a meeting, one where she can control the conditions."

"I wonder how old she is," Jack said.

"Thirty-some."

"Try thirty thousand. She can't be killed—at least not by a point-blank shotgun blast, or by drowning—and she can masquerade as another person down to the fingerprints and retinas. Who was she before Rae Archer? Before that? She might go all the way back through human history and prehistory.

"She might have come to this planet even before humans evolved. Wandering around as a saber-toothed tiger. As a dinosaur before that."

"No," Jan said, "I don't think she's an alien at all. Just a different kind of human. They probably evolved alongside us and learned to keep their nature secret—or somewhat secret. There are legends about shape-changers and immortals."

Jack rubbed his beard. "If so, there can't be many of them. They'd just take over."

"Maybe they have," Russ said. "We ought to check every world leader for DNA." He and Jan laughed nervously.

"The CIA is probably having this same conversation," Jack said.

In fact, by the time Jack said this, every employee of the CIA had donated a few cheek cells to the agency, as had employees of NSA and Homeland Security. A "suggestion" had come down from the White House that all of the country's leaders be tested.

Laboratories that did DNA testing were initially overwhelmed, but then their usual work was not just testing for the presence of DNA, but rather analyzing a sample to link it to a particular microorganism or person. This called for time-consuming processes like electrophoresis or mass spectrometry. But of course in those cases they already
knew
that a sample contained DNA; the question was pinning down its origin.

It turned out that a DNA/no DNA test was a lot simpler. You took the buccal swab and swirled it around in a test tube containing a solution that turns acid in the presence of even a microgram of DNA, then added a drop of phenol red. If it turned yellow, voila, the scraping was from a human cheek, or at least it came from something that had DNA of some description. It couldn't discriminate between onion DNA and human, but in this case it didn't matter. Samples of the "flesh" and "blood" in the arm that resided in a freezer in the Apia police station had been sent all over the world for analysis. The samples had the right proportions of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur, and nitrogen to have come from the amino acids that make up human (or animal) protein, but their chemistry was not human. It was not even organic chemistry.

The thing it came from had not been alive, in the sense that a human is alive.

The tests proved that every member of the American intelligence community was human, at least in a nominal sense, and so were all prominent politicians, including the president, which surprised a few people.

-44-

Apia, Samoa, 22 July 2021

Just a week after it had been blasted with a shotgun and swam to the airport, the changeling returned. Sharon Valida had a brand-new passport, a six-month work permit, and a suitcase full of light business outfits. Over the internet, she'd landed a job with a bank in Apia looking for a customer representative who could speak German and French.

She also had packed a nice bikini and cute jogging outfit; a dinner dress and a bottle of Sudafed unlike any other in the world. Each capsule had been carefully opened and emptied and refilled with a couple of hundred dollars' worth of reference DNA stolen from a teaching laboratory at the University of Hawaii. She had bitten down on one every few hours from the Honolulu airport to the Apia one, where a uniformed man apologetically stuck a swab in her mouth and stroked the inside of both cheeks. He did something under the counter and then waved her through.

The changeling was in a quiet race against time. It had to establish a convincing identity as a working woman in Apia before Michelle Watson, the Poseidon receptionist, retired to have her baby. It knew that Michelle's husband was a pleasant but unemployed beach bum, and she wanted to work as long as she could waddle down to the bank with her paycheck, which was okay with Poseidon.

Some time in the next six weeks they would advertise for a replacement. The ad wouldn't ask for a pretty young woman with a degree in business and minor in oceanography, but that was what they'd get.

The changeling rented an apartment on Beach Street, a few blocks from the project site, and began a routine that included jogging at dawn and dusk, which was when Russell was out riding his bike. He said he used the time to think, but he probably wouldn't be thinking so hard that he would ignore a pretty blonde in a tight silver jogging outfit with property of nobody stenciled on the back.

Its bank job was not difficult, and was moderately interesting when they actually needed Sharon as a translator. The rest of the time they had it out front, being pretty and a teller, both of which the changeling could do without thinking about anything but ones and zeros.

Three of the men at the bank asked Sharon out, and she dated them in strict rotation, without becoming "involved." It had been a woman often enough to know that men would accept a lack of sexual activity for a long time, if you were attractive and kept them talking about themselves. They were British, American, and Samoan; reserved, brash, and shy, respectively. The Samoan was the most interesting, taking his
palagi
woman to native places where no one else was Caucasian, and doing physical things like sailing and swimming. More traditional physical behavior, she was reserving for Russell.

Russell pedaled by her almost every morning, either approaching with a conventional I'm-not-looking-at-your-breasts smile and nod, or slowing down and coasting as he closed on her from behind.

The changeling contrived an incident the second week. Hearing the familiar bicycle about a block away, it stumbled and fell, skinning a knee.

Russell raced up and dropped his bike with a clatter. Sharon was looking at the minor wound and tentatively picking gravel out of it. The changeling manufactured enough histamine to make itself on the verge of tears.